[Imc] thanks, and a few questions (fwd)

[David Young]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2001 at 12:22:11PM -0500, Brian Hagy wrote:
> one way i've heard of, though can't give you specifics as to where this is
> happening), is that on a web site, a "ranking" program can be used.  with
> this software, people can rank an article (1 for slimey, don't read, and
> up to 5 or 10 for excellent, rather important).  Then, all articles are
> sorted according to ranking.  Thus, all articles are present on the
> website, but only the articles that people consistently consider to be
> necessary, or thought-provoking, or whatever, appear at the top of the
> list.  The more "offensive" or "intentionally disturbing" articles are
> near the bottom of the listing, thus requiring people to do the dreaded
> scrolling in order to get down to them.  we haven't employed such a
> software program with our website yet.  and i don't know off hand which
> websites have, though i've heard rumors that some have.  but i think it's
> something we'll be researching, as it seems to be an interesting solution
> to a touchy problem.

I suspect that the designs of electronic moderation systems like one sees
on multiple-user "Web logs" are shallow and adhoc. I don't think they
could possibly achieve anything like fair moderation. Maybe I'm wrong.

A famous example of a Web log with moderation system is slashdot.org.
Its moderation system deserves to be called a notorious failure,
I think. Similar to a moderation system is the rating system at the
Internet Movie Database, imdb.com. It had some glaring problems the last
time I looked at it.

A moderation system, by the way, is not something that should be left
up to computer wonks exclusively, because the problem of moderation on
a Web log is not solely technical.

Dave

-- 
David Young                   On the Job Consulting
dyoung at onthejob.net     Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933